


Patronage

by legendarytobes



Series: Gemelo [1]
Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Canon Divergence, Comedy, F/M, Michaella, Romance, season five, season five AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-16
Updated: 2020-07-16
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:21:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25299061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/legendarytobes/pseuds/legendarytobes
Summary: Ella Lopez has a lot to deal with and to attempt to forgive with Lucifer's apparent return to Los Angeles. What is unexpected is how much the supposed Devil is hiding.
Relationships: Ella Lopez/Michael
Series: Gemelo [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1832677
Comments: 30
Kudos: 170





	Patronage

**Author's Note:**

> Again, seriously, here be spoilers, hence why I didn't label the other character.

** Patronage **

The days were draining.

Michael thought he’d taken that into account, that he’d planned for it. He’d taken the keen eye he’d once held in reserve for meting out Father’s Judgment and turned it to his plan to take the life he wanted. The one he’d been denied for eons after the Fall. How funny was that? How big a fucking cosmic joke was it on him? He’d won. Michael had landed that final blow to Samael and sent him plummeting down below to his punishment. But Samael had flailed, grabbed for his wings, and it had taken everything Michael had to wrench himself free.

It had not spared his left wing or kept it from breaking in his frantic twin’s grasp. Nor in Mother’s growing madness and grief and Father’s obsession with his humanity project had anyone noticed him, noticed that the wing wasn’t healing much at all. Not with its ruined, bald patches of feathers and its bones that grated on each other when he forced them out. He’d helped the damage along and hidden his pain in his shame and denial. By the time it had come to expel Mother…well, the job had fallen to Gabriel.

The Strength of God, one who was neither the betrayer like Samael, who had turned out a more insidious poison than even Michael could have guessed, nor a busted source of shame like himself, had been tasked with that. And by the time Father had realized what had befallen to Michael, he’d been written off as surely as Samael had.

And he had done everything right.

So, he had lingered for as long as he could in the Silver City, trying to help with the work still bestowed upon him, still allowed to judge and do the ledger work. He balanced souls and helped with pleas, but as time progressed he was relegated from the trials and the visible work of judgement of arriving souls to the backroom. To just keeping the records.

To where he would not be seen.

For Father made angels as perfection, and with a spine and shoulder twisted to accommodate a broken wing, one that he could barely flutter with, Michael was lacking.

Father could have fixed him. The Presence made universes on top of universes, a multiverse of worlds where anything was possible. But his own restoration had never come, and Michael understood why. It took millennia, years of dawning horror, but he had figured it out some time during the human Middle Ages. It had taken so long to accept the truth because it seemed unfathomable.

Father would not allow him to heal because he had written _both twins off_.

Samael had rebelled. Michael had tried for years to reason with him, to beg his twin, to even _threaten_ Sam before he’d led something so half-assed (when weren’t Sam’s ideas that) and inherently wrong. Father was perfect. Father was right. Father had given them all life and a mission, and when the Rebellion started, Michael had obeyed his to the letter and led the army to expel not just the Rebel angels, but to banish his own twin. Flesh of his flesh.

To stab at a side that reflected his own.

And now the Betrayer was down below in a kingdom of ash and flame and demons and death, is what Azrael said about the realm beyond those gates was true. And the other, once God’s preferred solider, had outlived his usefulness and been shunted aside. But deep down, Michael was a strategist at heart, understood the steps of a perfect plan. He was not like God, but he understood some of Father’s processes. One half of the Demiurge had broken bad, had brought carnage in his wake that had left no angel dead but had torn heaven asunder.

Now the universe was filled with light and form, and the Great Dragon confined. It was safer to Father’s rule to keep the Demiurge---Creation and Will---separate. It was _safer_ for Father to leave Michael lame, lest he ever follow in Samael’s footsteps. Michael had always been the better swordsman, the more attentive warrior after all. More of everything.

Father did not want a repeat of Samael’s actions. So, just in case, Michael was to stay as he was.

Broken.

Useless.

And until he’d finally broken inside, sunk under the stares of his siblings and the whispers whenever he mustered the energy to join them, then Michael had given up. No one had even noticed him slip from the Pearly Gates and to Earth. And slip was a generous term for his near plummet to the plane below, for the pathetic and painful flaps of his wings---well mostly his right wing---as he landed below.

He spent the next four decades drifting. It was not hard to pick up the rhythm amongst mortals. He never got close to them, never cared for them, but he learned to mimic them as he had learned to mimic appearing normal in short bursts for the Host. He was good with numbers, with weighing the scales, and planning. It made him more than adept for dull jobs where no one asked too many questions---accounting mostly.

Thus, the former Sword of God floundered and bid his time. Then, he found his window when for the first time since Michael had half-fallen-half-flapped to earth, Samael came up from Hell for an orgy and then some. It was just that this time, The Lord of the Flies never left. Michael could not take Samael in a fight. It had taken everything he’d had to do it eons ago and with a heavenly sword _and_ two functional wings. With a right side that barely worked on most days and a defective wing, there was no way he could take his twin one-on-one.

For a while, he assumed Amenadiel would do his duty and send the Adversary back home as the First Born always did.

But that had not come to pass.

And then the plan came into place, the more he heard of Samael and his actions, the more news clippings Michael found from L.A., the more intel he gathered, the larger and more intricate a plan came together. After he _felt_ the rip in the multiverse, felt their Mother given access to a new, unspoiled realm, Michael had left Washington, D.C. for the City of Angels. But he would bide his time, find a way to take what he wanted from Samael when Sam grew sloppy and made a mistake---and Sam was an expert at fucking up. It took close to three years, a drop in the bucket compared to what he’d waited for a life again, but Samael had returned willingly to Hell to keep a tight leash over his kingdom.

Leaving behind family, friends, and a miracle if the rumors were true of his very own, a beautiful woman who had grabbed the attention of more than one supernaturally touched being so far. Michael could slip into that. Samael would be none the wiser, and if he played his cards right, leaned on the trauma of pretending it was Sam’s own millennia in Hell that had changed him and made him forget the little things, then he could have that life.

Friends.

People who no longer looked at him with pity or, worse, through him for his crippled body.

And the love of a good woman who had been touched by the tiniest hints of divinity.

Michael had planned it meticulously and waited months to appear, watching Chloe Decker’s every move, planning for the perfect time to swoop in (not that he literally could) as the cavalry, and to then claim a real life for the first time in thousands of years.

But he wasn’t happy.

He was tired from the charade and had found so far that while he could see why Samael was attracted to Chloe Decker with her sharp mind, tough resilience, and tender heart, that something was lacking for him. It was perhaps also a pang of conscience too. In the last month, he’d made excuses about Hell changing him (or rather Lucifer), but Michael couldn’t sleep with her.

His whole plan centered around enjoying the fruits of his labor and plotting. The lynchpin was _her_ , the miracle who had tamed the Beast of Revelation and affected (though not enough) the Original Sinner. But she did not capture his heart. Honestly, she rankled him sometimes, and he had to hide his annoyance, especially with her obvious deep love and adulation for Samael of all angels.

Besides, in his heart of hearts, Michael was not so far gone that he would ever dare sleep with a woman period without her knowledge. It was too like a demonic action, too like something he’d have weighed his scales against a sinner for before letting Azrael ferry them to Hell.

So, he was as lost as he ever was.

But it was worse because he was drowning in the lies. Even with Mazikeen in the know, even with her not yet spilling his secrets, Michael was miserable. She was a confidante he did not want as demons were such lesser beings. They were all filth and anger, pain and torture. He had been ruined by degrees, that much was true, but he was not _so_ ruined that he would pal around with a demon. Run-ins over his forty years on earth with Gaudium, the Fallen cherub, was more than enough.

He hated the prison he’d trapped himself in

The lies he was having more trouble daily keeping straight, the calls from both Amenadiel and Linda Martin who were worried about his behavior, the way Chloe Decker’s eyes filled with tears when she thought he wasn’t looking. That annoying dullard of her ex-husband who slandered him and accused him of every type of evil, which even Michael could be fair enough to admit that much evil Samael couldn’t have accomplished single-handedly. Especially the death of whoever Charlotte was.

It was empty.

His one big chance for a life, and somehow his calculations were off.

But he had no hopes of returning to the Silver City, not with his ruined wing. He had no one there who missed him. He had nothing, so he might as well have nothing here, even with the lies.

Yet they got to be too much. On long days at the precinct where he poured over paperwork, something he had an affinity for over his years of weighing the scales for Father (That had confused him mightily; Chloe Decker had burst into tears when he’d first sat down to it.). But it made his shoulder ache and his wing shiver under his skin.

To pretend to be as Samael was, to hide his lame stature took so much work.

Michael had perfected the art of escape. The bathroom, the precinct break room, the commissary, the evidence locker, the suspect interrogation room. All were places he could hide and let his right arm hang limp and try and bite back the pain and tremors in his left side, that agony from a wing that was flatly _wrong_.

But the best place among them was Ella Lopez’s lab. It was spacious and easy to obscure with its myriad of blinds. If he and Chloe Decker were working a late shift, Ella tended to be off eventually. He could hide there for a blessed twenty or thirty minutes. His excuses were growing thin at this point, but Chloe was no longer pressing him for details. Her expression mournful as she desperately tried to accept this version of “Lucifer” who was not the one she wanted at all (nor was Michael, he’d realized too late, a good enough actor to be the same as Samael). Chloe knew the arrangement was broken, but they were in the stage where he was clinging to it as all he had, and where the Detective could not admit all that she wanted was not as it seemed.

So, yes, Ella’s lab was his sanctuary during the long nights. An island away from the Hell Michael had made for himself. Then again, perhaps he wasn’t allowed peace. Perhaps Father never should have tried to split such power between him and Samael. Perhaps exile was the best he could hope for. Michael slumped into a chair and tried to let his poor shoulder rest. He could not let his wings out. Theoretically, he could lock Ella’s lab door and keep the blinds shut but it was too big a risk. He was sure that Chloe knew what Samael’s gleaming white wings looked like, and he could never risk her seeing them. She would _know_.

Moreover, any human who saw him would become a drooling sycophant before his divinity, such as it was.

Not optimal.

So he sighed and leaned back in Ella’s chair. Idly, he spun it around before his eyes landed on a window ledge by Ella’s desk. He was always here just long enough to get through her explanations. He gathered that Ella had been very sisterly once to Samael but she was well and truly wrathful at “Lucifer” now, hurt and angry that he’d left without saying goodbye, urgent family work or not. When there was business to concentrate on and murder to solve, Michael didn’t let his vision dally.

He had not noticed all of her totems before.

On the ledge was a prayer candle to Mary, a crucifix, and a few small votives, but what surprised him was a small statue of, well, _himself_ with sword in one hand and scales in the other. Not that it was literally an exact likeness. She’d gotten this graven image from probably the same store as the candles. It was an idealized image of who he had been, once, long before in the Silver City and before the Rebellion had ever happened. Back when he’d fought other pantheons and against demons, back when he’d been the head of Father’s army.

So very proud.

So very naïve.

He wasn’t even that surprised to see that statue here. Ella was not just Catholic, but deeply devoted as he’d heard it, at least after some crisis of faith after Charlotte’s death. That dullard had blamed him for that too. Apparently, his twin had ruined so much of the lives around him, if Daniel Espinoza was to be believed. Michael understood that as Samael left carnage in his wake.

It was what the Lightbringer was truly gifted at.

But humans had made him the patron saint of soldiers and cops. It was fitting for the likeness or be in the precinct. To bless and keep it safe, even if in reality such an image did no good.

And somehow Michael couldn’t resist drawing closer. It was all he had been, all he _should be_ , and it made no sense to want to reach out and run his hands over the smooth stone but he did anyway, his finger running a second time over the sword as a now-familiar voice called out and the full set of lights exploded around him.

“Why are you even touching that!”

Michael turned and forced himself to try and stand straight. It was going on almost twelve hours now, and his arm hurt, and his back was spasming, and the charade got harder every day. He found his right arm, overworked and always overcompensating for his wretched wing, wouldn’t respond to him. It fell loosely at his side and struggle as he could to correct it, to hold it with even a passingly normal posture failed him.

Glaring at her, he walked with a slight limp, to the chair and sat back down in it. He did not crumple, thank you very much.

Ella narrowed her eyes at him. “I knew it.”

“I beg your pardon,” Michael said, working to keep up the accent his brother had affected. He knew Samael well enough, even now, to understand his preferred British speech had been all about a cultivated image to bed him more lovers. Michael found it pretentious and desperate. “You know no such thing.”

“Your arm,” Ella pointed out. “You’ve been favoring it for weeks. I mean, you hide it pretty well, but I can tell at the end of the day from the way your posture changes. Also, dude, I’ve come back the kitchen a few times and you’re barely able to open the refrigerator with that arm laying at your side.” Ella shrugged. “Also, you used to drink with your right hand, but when Chloe grabs the mocha explosions, now you get it all with the left.”

Michael narrowed his eyes at her. “Details never fail to elude you, do they, Miss Lopez?”

“No, so maybe _finally_ , after almost seven months, and a big honking disappearance, you can tell me what you were doing for your Dad that didn’t involve saying goodbye or a phone or the internet or…”

Michael sighed. Slipping into Samael’s life was hardly uncomplicated. His brother had left so much of a mess behind, and Michael was growing tired of cleaning it all up. “There was no way to ring you where I was. I would have, I swear it---”

“Are you actually like James Bond! That would explain whatever injury you have that you so don’t want Chloe to know about and that Dan hasn’t noticed. So, totally, are you MI-6? That I’d almost forgive you for.”

Michael quirked his head at her. He was a fan of films, but he preferred older fare, things from the noir period and also in the golden age of Hollywood in the 1950s and 1960s. Thrillers or whatever Ella was rambling about were not things he was familiar with. “Am I what?”

“You know 007? License to kill? I mean you’re the one who said that and I quote Edris Elba was highly shaggable and would be a killer next Bond. We talked about it for like an hour, dude!”

Michael kept his expression pinched. Of course, Samael had such wide tastes. Father would not approve of that. Then again, Father had left Michael out to dry, so it was the least of his concerns how many humans and demons or men and women Samael slept with, even now if he were fucking monsters down in Hell.

“I…I’m sorry. I forgot.”

“You got hurt wherever you were. So my second question has to be is your dad like a cult leader. The Bible-as-super-real obsession, all the siblings who are probably like you and Amenadiel and adopted from all over, the secrecy and the way your dad mistreated you.”

“I wouldn’t say that my Father---”

“It’s just…why would you even go back to a cult for a hot minute!”

Michael sighed. Perhaps he liked it better when Ella wasn’t talking to “Lucifer” at all. “Ella… _Miss Lopez_ , I did not return to any cult. Father hardly runs that.”

“Then why wouldn’t you tell me, and you’re injured so what actually happened?”

“I can never tell you. It is confidential, and I can’t explain it. I wish that I could. I am at a loss for words to explain the last six months, but I cannot.”

“Because you don’t want to.”

“Because you shall never understand. I…but you are not wrong, I was injured, and I feel rather off kilter of late. I did not wish to worry the Detective. I…” Michael deflated at all of it. He was so tired of the lying. No wonder Samael had never done it. It was too complicated to keep track of.

“What hurt you?”

Michael tried to stand but he was too exhausted, and his body would not obey such commands. He got about halfway and tumbled back toward the floor and poor Ella made the mistake of trying to catch him. It ended with them a tangle of limbs, and he rolled off of her as fast as he could, since his bulk would do her no good.

“Ella! Ella are you okay?” he asked, struggling to his feet and rewarded by a wide stare from her. “Fuck did I break something?”

“Ha! Called it! You really aren’t British. I had you pegged as method the whole time. I didn’t think I’d get it out of you.”

His eyes widened back at hers. In his panic, he hadn’t meant to slip. He’d been careful for weeks, and then he’d gone and messed up everything…not that “everything” had been going to plan at all. “Ella, look, about that…”

“Well, we can then cross MI-6 off the list and INS, which I thought about too.”

“Ella, I…” Michael rubbed at his right shoulder as best he could. It never really helped, but it was at least something active, something he could try. “You won’t tell anyone about this, will you?”

“It’s okay to break character, Lucifer, just like it’s okay to tell me where you were going. It would have been okay for you to tell me before you took off, you know?”

He nodded, unsure of how to fix his brother’s messes. “Believe me when I say that Lu…that I did not want to leave Los Angeles, and that I wanted back her desperately. Also, before you ask I don’t run drugs and I’m not in a mafia.”

“Well, those were some of my other guesses.” Ella snapped her fingers and her ponytail bobbed in a delightfully jaunty way that was endearing somehow. And what a strange thought that was. “Ooh, are you in witness protection?”

“No, that’s definitely not it. I am sorry that h… _my_ leaving hurt you, truly I am. Believe me when I say I wouldn’t have wanted to do that if I could have avoided it.”

“How can I! You left! I was dealing with a lot of stuff too. I was struggling with my faith and I finally felt the Big Guy in my life again, and then you were just gone. I wanted to tell you so many things. Then, over the last six months I wanted to see you too. When I had a new fandom to try out or for the forensics talks you like---I know you don’t actually like them but you listen so well and I had a great one on carrion rotting and time of death to explain---but you weren’t here!”

Michael stepped forward, his arm like a dead weight at his side, but he didn’t like to see Ella in pain. He felt some flicker of guilt when he saw that in Chloe Decker’s face, when he wasn’t quite Samael enough. However, to see Ella upset like this, it tore at him in a way nothing had since his twin in his Fall long ago.

She met him the other half of the way and burrowed into his left side. Confused but somehow comforted, Michael wrapped his arm around her, even as the other laid limp at his side. _Uselessly_ at his side.

“I would have understood,” she sniffed.

Michael rubbed a small circle over her back with his good arm. “Ella, I can promise you that you’d try but you wouldn’t have, that it was all dangerous.”

“I believe that if you got beat up!” She pulled away and crossed her arms over her chest. “How can I help with some remedies. I can look up a few things to maybe help take the edge off.”

Michael almost bit back the urge to say that, while he drank, he could never get buzzed and that narcotics didn’t interest him. They had _always_ interested Samael from what he’d heard. “That’s sweet but---”

“There’s different orthopedic exercises you can do to strengthen things. I’m sure I can look into the best braces if you’re interested. You can at least try them in my office if you don’t want Chloe to know yet, but you could tell her. She loves you and she’d get it.”

“I…you’d do that? I thought you were mad at me?”

“Oh, I am, but you’re hurt, and I am seriously getting wherever you went sucked hardcore.”

“It did.”

“And was dangerous and you didn’t deserve that much, dude. I just…was it so easy to forget me?”

Michael could only speak for himself, but he suspected his twin must have felt the same way with regards to Ella. “It would be impossible to forget you. I feel someone could live eons and never meet another soul quite like yours.”

She shook her head ruefully. “Dude, I can see you’re getting the method back on.”

“Perhaps,” he said, although he didn’t force himself yet to affect the accent. The break was important after all. It gave him the strength he clung to in order to survive the rest of his day. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to touch your stuff either.”

“You did, but you’re usually not into religious stuff. Then again, maybe after whatever you went through I’m meeting the real Lucifer or, well, you’re going to get a new character eventually.”

Michael shook his head. “You won’t tell Chloe for right now, will you? It’s all so much to deal with, the last six months, and you’re not wrong. I’m struggling with my identity.”

“You can be whatever you need here. I think you can always tell her your real name or that you’re hurt or that wherever you were, it was bad.” She frowned at him. “I’m still mad you didn’t tell me where you were going though. Like I’m offering sanctuary because it’s helpful, not because I’m a pushover.”

“I didn’t expect that,” he said, offering her his good hand. “Michael Demiurgos, nice to meet you.”

Ella shook her head. “Definitely going to encourage you to actually come clean to Chloe. I steered her so wrong on Pierce---I didn’t know like those arms man!---but I don’t want to always hide things from her. You’re dealing with a lot, and I can see you’re really hurt, so take your time, but she does love you. So if you’re hurting, you can tell her.”

Michael took his hand back and sighed. Somehow, it would figure that Ella was an arms kind of woman. Then again, what an odd thought as well. He’d never been interested in humans or thought much of them outside of coworkers or landlords to fool. He had come for Chloe Decker because she had been Samael’s first, because his brother deserved to feel what it was like to have a life ripped out from under him.

Turnabout was fair play.

But with Ella, he was actually disappointed that she seemed to value arms as much as she did. His right one was…but those were odd stray thoughts. He was only trying to find refuge, a way to keep his charade going because he had no idea how to get out of the trap he’d managed to land himself in.

And yet, Ella liked arms and that was the only information his brain could circle at the moment.

“I’ll get there,” he offered, finally remembering how to speak. “I…after everything I’ve been through, maybe I was feeling reflective about God too.”

“The Big Guy? So, maybe you’re not as mad at him either.”

Michael clenched his jaw and shook his head. It took a few moments before he could speak. “No, my reasons have evolved, but I don’t take comfort in God like you do, Ella. I did once, but I can’t now.”

“Then touching the statues and candles?”

“It was still rude, but I just…well forgive me, but I didn’t know you had all of them. I hadn’t noticed them since I, uh, got back.”

“You don’t like them, I guess.”

He stepped around her with some effort and traced his finger a final time on the tiny simulacrum of his sword long ago, back when he was still worthy to wield it. “St. Michael?”

She nodded and quirked her head at him. “You’re new character, huh? Using context cues?”

“Not at all. That, Ella, is all coincidence or maybe a convergence is more like it. I assume it’s because he’s the patron saint of cops and you work with them.”

Ella nodded. “It’s what I tell everyone, but that’s not the real reason.” She sidled up next to him, and he found himself distracted by the warmth of her body, even as they both stared at his statue. “I was in a bad car accident when I was eight.”

“I’m sorry.”

She shook her head. “The doctors all told my mom and dad that I should have died. They hadn’t seen someone as tiny as I was survive a trauma like that. I was still in the hospital for months. My leg was pretty crushed, and I just…so much physical therapy. One of the visitors from our church brought me a St. Michael statue like this one, but he was slaying the snake in that one. I didn’t…I don’t think Lucifer is a bad person even in the Bible.”

Michael snorted a little but said nothing. He’d already lost his ruse with her, best not to confuse her utterly or make her drag him out and confess to Chloe then and there. “So, now you opt for the Great Judge, am I right?”

“Yes, seems friendlier. But I had that and, maybe it was dumb, but on nights when it hurt or when therapy was too much even when I was outpatient, I’d look and figure the Big Guy and my own saint were looking out for me. It got me through a lot…I wish it could have gotten me through more, but it was comforting. You probably think that’s dumb.”

Michael quirked his head at her and studied her dark eyes intently. “No, I don’t. It’s an admirable thing when someone can still have faith. If it brings you peace, if _he does_ , then that’s something at least.”

“Yeah, I…hey so deal, you won’t tell anyone about me and the car accident, right? I mean, no one knows and there was a lot of fallout from that. I just…so much baggage from Detroit that isn’t here in L.A., and I don’t want anyone to know.”

“Understandable. We all want to reinvent ourselves from time to time.”

She nodded. “And I’m going to encourage you to actually be honest with Chloe for once, but I won’t tell her, _Michael_ , that you’re totally American and were this whole time. Damn, had me fooled.”

“Yes, I bet,” Michael said, sighing and finally forcing himself to assume an even posture and to mimic Samael’s mannerisms. The accent came last, and it was all like pulling on a costume, one that fit horribly. “Miss Lopez,” he said, giving her a courtly bow, that kind of extravagant move that Samael always would have done. Nothing simple for Sam, not ever. “I appreciate that offer, and you know how I love a good favor. You’ve a deal.”

She giggled and then stopped herself. Ella glared up at him, and there was a fury there that might almost scare Mazikeen if Ella ever pointed it full force at the demon. “We still have a lot to talk about, and we’re not good, you get that?”

“Yes, well, I can surmise that much,” Michael replied.

“But I get something really mondo bad happened to you while you were gone, and I get what it’s like not to want people to stare at you when you just _can’t_ do what they can. I just…you can have my lab when you need it.” She shook her head and leaned against her table. “Sanctuary totally, Michael,” she emphasized her point by making air quotes. “But you owe me, and I intend for you to pay up.”

“I suppose I have many amends to make. What price will you exact of me, Miss Lopez?”

She chuckled. “You really are good! I don’t know why you’re not in movies. I’ve seen way crappier actors. You do the whole back and forth thing great.”

In truth, he and Samael had grown up mimicking each other, playing games to fool their siblings since no other angels were twins, no other shared their bond, let alone the connection of the Demiurge. It was easy to slip into Sam’s voice and mannerisms, his bravado. It was difficult only to maintain the correct stance without feeling everything drained from him. His muscles and defective limbs always his betrayers.

“Thank you, but what is the price you’ve decided upon?”

Ella rubbed her hands together, “Oh, you have no idea, buddy. I’ll meet you at your place on Saturday, and believe me, I’m going to exact all the vengeance.”

Michael swallowed hard. For the first time in low these many eons, he could admit he was afraid.


End file.
